"the hyper age: linguistics engineering by august highlnad and the wlmn "

august highland presents:

THE HYPER AGE

THE PAUL WHITNEY COLLECTION

i want to thank my brother daniel for everything he and his wife rena have done for me since both our parents passed away three years ago - until then i lived with my parents till the age of 30 taking care of them feeding and washing them and providing them with all the caretaking needs that could have been provided for them in a nursing home had they wanted to be placed in a facility for the elderly - even if they had wanted this i don't think i could have had the heart to see them live out their final years in an institution - at first the role of caring for my aging parents was easy - cooking and cleaning the house and shopping for groceries - that was all that was required - but as alzheimer's progressed for both of them my duties became more difficult for me to adjust to - now i had to care for my parents in the same way that parents have to care for their children - the most difficult part of this experience was not the actual tasks themselves - i loved my parents very much and was able to eliminate my resistance to such things as sponge baths and bed pans - i overcame my anxiety through the compassion i somehow cultivated to a degree i never thought possible for a self-preoccupied writer like myself who was used to getting all his needs met by the very self-sacrificing people to whom i was now sacrificing my own needs - the most difficult part was watching their illness steadily progress and disintegrate their minds - i was fortunate to have a girlfriend who was patient - she was a very generous spirit - she had her limitations though like everyone does - in particular she refused to have sex with me in my parents' house as though their disease was in the air and we could breathe it in or it could get on our skin and on the sheets of the bed - i could not leave my parents alone though and go to her apartment - so for almost three years we had sex in my car in the garage - i have a dodge caravan - there was plenty of room - one thing that she still had to put up with was the room monitor - i kept the room monitor in my parent's room turned on and took the receiver with me into the van - patricia could not get aroused while hearing the white noise on the receiver punctuated by my parents' dysfunctional speech - i solved this by getting an earplug for the receiver at radio shack - then after almost three years patricia ended the relationship - her company promoted her and transfered her to another city fours hours away by car - i know now in retrospect that this was for the best for us both - now she is married and has two kids and is assistant vice president of her company - her husband actually looks like a nice guy - i have only seen pictures of him - patricia still emails me from time to time with a family photo attached - soon after my relationship dissolved i began to miss my work - our splitting up relit the pilot light of creativity for me - i began to resent my dying parents and went into therapy - my therapist diagnosed me with severe depression - i started laughing in her office when she told me this - i thought this was the funniest most outrageous thing i had ever heard in my life - i laughed and laughed and laughed - the room got very hot and my heart started pounding in my chest - i still couldn't stop laughing - then the sudden realization struck me like a punch to the stomach - the realization that she was right - that was seven years ago - the remains of my parents who died naturally in their sleep in the same summer are now in urns and i am still taking my medication and have not experienced one episode of depression since i started taking anti-depressants - after selling the house i could have bought a condo or townhouse but was too anxious to live alone - of course this came out in therapy - introducing diagnosis number two - social anxiety - now i had to take a medley of prescription drugs - while the social anxiety was for the most part alleviated an unexpected side-effect began to alter my physical appearance - weight-gain - i have put on twenty-five pounds since starting taking drugs - but it's a worthwhile trade-off - i still got dates - that was my biggest fear - being unattractive to women - but to my surprise and my relief i have discovered that women are really not too concerned about the overweight thing in the same way men are about women - i am seeing someone now who i think could be the one - i met her through the couple who bought my parents' house - her name is miriam - she happened to live in the neighborhood and when she saw the for sale sign she told her friends who were house-hunting - after the house was sold my brother and his wife invited me and miriam for the weekend - daniel and rena are well-off - daniel designs gaming software - rena is a full-time mother - they have three children with one on the way - the weekend ended and miriam left but i stayed - i set up temporary headquarters in the guestroom while planning what i was going to do next and enjoying my new role as the fun-loving car-pooling cartoon-watching bedtime-story-reading uncle - during my extended stay at my brother's the doctorate student who was renting the renovated carriage house in back completed his coursework and exams and gave notification that he was moving back to california to finish his dissertation - that was nine months ago - now you know what i have daniel and rena to thank for - and as for my relationship with miriam - daniel's kids are already calling her auntie miriam - we're not quite ready to make that official yet

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